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Maxim April 2002 Maxim Online
Where
you’ve seen her:
She got her first breaks in low-budget masterpieces like Universal
Soldier III, Puppet Master 4, and NBC’s The David Cassidy Story,
but appears with Val Kilmer in the upcoming The Salton Sea.
Chandra on dance fever:
“When I was five years old, I told my parents that I wanted to take ballet.
So ballet was the focus of my life…until puberty. Then I discovered boys
and started dating a guy with a mohawk who’d come to my ballet class and
freak everybody out. Shortly after that is when I quit.”
Chandra on faking it:
“My death scene in The Salton Sea is really weird. I mean, I
get shot in the head. What experience can you possibly draw from? There’s
nothing you can compare it to, really.
The homesick blues:
“I go back to Canada every chance I get. The last time I was supposed
to go back, I couldn’t get a flight, so I had to take a bus, which was
a total nightmare. You end up eating Burger King three times a day. I
won’t be doing that again.”
Thursday,
September 9, 1999
Go West!
Something More about Chandra
By LOUIS B. HOBSON
Express Writer
Former
Edmontonian Chandra West was never a typical child.
At
the age of five, West knew she wanted to do something more than play with
dolls.
"We
had just moved from Edmonton to Vancouver. I announced to my parents that
I wanted to be a dancer. My parents have always encouraged their children
to pursue their dreams so my mom enrolled me in ballet," recalls
West, who appears in the film Something More, opening in theatres tomorrow.
West's
brother, an elevator investigator, still lives in Edmonton.
"I'm
the youngest of nine children. We are the culmination of three different
marriages."
West danced religiously until she was 15 and then announced she wanted
to try acting. With her parents' blessing, she hung up her ballet shoes
and began attending acting classes. Two years later she was taking a summer-school
class in performance arts at England's prestigious Oxford University.
With such lofty credentials, West shudders when she's reminded that she
starred in not one, but two, episodes of the direct-to-video horror series
Puppet Master.
"You
have to start somewhere, and it was the first audition I went to when
I moved to Los Angeles. The reason I did two of them was that Puppet Master
4 and Puppet Master 5 were shot simultaneously to save money."
Her
one consolation in appearing in these fright features is that she was
no screaming, wincing victim.
"I
played a bit of a tough cookie. I took all those little monsters head-on."
West has long since retired from fighting monster dolls in order to weave
her way through relationship mazes in such films as Something More. "I
once had a guy break up with me en route to visit my parents. I think
that rates pretty high in relationship horror stories," says West.
She found better chemistry with her Something More co-star Michael Goorjian,
who plays Neve Campbell's sometime boyfriend on Party of Five. They filmed
Something More in Regina two years ago and were recently reunited in Winnipeg
for a TV movie, Life In a Day. In Something More, West plays a woman who
has been hurt too many times so she vows never to become emotionally involved
with a man again.
West's
other credits include the shot-in-Canada series Viper, Lonesome Dove and
Avonlea.
"That's
the irony of relocating to Los Angeles. I end up doing more filming in
Canada than I ever did when I worked out of Vancouver and Toronto."
So far, however, West's Canadian assignments have yet to land her back
in her home town.
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